Quotations

We may enjoy an experience of God that is so delightful that we may think all our troubles are over and we have at last completed the journey.Then after a few hours or a few days we find ourselves on the spiral staircase again and cannot even remember the pleasures of that transient experience of divine union.The whole purpose of this alternation is to bring the soul to the total transformation of love.
 

There is no there anywhere, no destination, only ways through,
passages, resting spots, doors that swing open to where
a vision is hammered out, painted, written, sung or prayed
behind the facade of the common.
 

There is no glimpse of the light without walking the path.You can’t get it from anyone else, nor can you give it to anyone.You take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few steps it will be easier to take a few more.
 

There is healing in the universe.
There is a fabric that holds things together.
When it is ready . . . in its own good time,
shall it not bind together . . . all of us?

The more I can love everything -- the trees, the land, the water, my fellow men, women and children, and myself -- the more health I am going to experience and the more of myself I am going to be . . .

Underneath all we are taught, there is a voice that calls to us beyond what is reasonable, and in listening to that flicker of spirit, we often find deep healing.This is the voice of embodiment calling us to live our lives like sheet music played, and it often speaks to us briefly in moments of deep crisis.Sometimes it is so faint we mistake its whisper for wind through leaves.But taking it into the heart of our pain, it can often open the paralysis of our lives. . . . the best chance to be whole is to love whatever gets in the way, until it ceases to be an obstacle.

Healing is embracing what is most feared;
healing is opening what has been closed,
softening what has hardened into obstruction,
healing is learning to trust life.

I was never in a hurry in my life.He lives long who enjoys life and bears no jealousy of others, whose heart harbors no malice or anger, who sings a lot and cries a little, who rises and retires with the sun, who likes to work, and who knows how to rest.

Healing is bringing oneself into harmony with the universe and the Divine creative force.It makes us whole and happy, content . . . and happiness is heaven.

Healing is more than eliminating disease symptoms; it is a process of achieving wholeness, alignment, and integration that encompasses every level of our being.Healing encourages self-awareness and enables us to express our unique potential more fully in our work, study, and relationships with ourselves and others.The healing journey not only helps us connect to our own inner rhythms, but also brings us closer to our spiritual nature and the world around us.

The sacred cannot be precisely defined. Each of us perceives it through the lens of a unique personal history. For me, sacredness is an experience of the inner radiance of life, the unseen force that transforms and nourishes the physical world but is never limited by it. There is something more to it, a mystery that is never totally grasped.

Be aware of the sacred site . . .
Sacred sites are sacred because our
   response to them is sacred.
There is a resonance between the sacred
   within and the sacred without . . .

The sacred is within our hearts . . .

Visit sacred sites, yes.Bathe in the
   resonance, inspire the divine.
But never forget where lies the holiest
   power of all.   

We become aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane . . . something sacred shows itself to us . . . something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural "profane" world.

Frederick Franck turned to the door of the building, a massive wooden sculpture in the form of the sun and its rays, and pushed it open.I saw that it turned on a central axis, so that only one half of the door was open at any one time.To remind us, he murmured, that we step into this sacred space as we walk into life, alone and silently . . .I looked around me and marveled at this ninety-year-old man from whose hand had sprung everything I could see.He had carved the door, made the stained-glass windows and every other object in sight.Pacem in Terris, I realized, was one man’s act of artistic faith: a work of art outside the parameters of the art world, and also a religious statement unconfined by any religion.

Nature is a sacred space that has the power to draw us out of our small mind into the one Big Mind of God.During warm weather, praying and meditating outside in nature can naturally enhance your practice.You can pray anywhere, even on the subway, but whenever you find yourself in a place that feels sacred, you have already made the connection with God.

To see all things at their origin, their beginning, puts us in kinship with all that lives: trees, birds, stars seem foreign to us only inasmuch as we perceive them outside of our common origin with them.To drink at the source of all that lives and breathes expands the heart and makes the blood sing, echoing the song of all the vital fluids in the world.To dwell near all beginnings is to draw infinitely near to that which creates both the unity and the diversity of all beings.

"It doesn’t matter to most people that the wind sings in the trees or that a mountain shimmers in the sunlight.But you find life in all this, a life you can partake of."

I replied that no one understands nature: a tree bathed in sunlight, a weathered stone, an animal, a mountain, each has life, has a tale to tell, is a life, suffers, endures, experiences joy, dies -- but we
don’t understand it.

Blessed are the men and women
  who are planted on Your earth in Your garden,
Who grow as Your trees and flowers grow,
  who transform their darkness to light.
Their roots plunge into darkness;
  their faces turn toward the light.
All those who love You are beautiful;
  they overflow with Your presence
  so that they can do nothing but good.
There is infinite space in Your garden;
  all men, all women are welcome here;
  all they need do is enter.

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

A circle of trees . . . I felt I was bringing the journey home to the ordinary dimensions of my life, rooting it in the place I lived every day.I lay back on the earth and looked up through the branches of an oak, feeling suddenly like the sun was my own heart pulsing up there with light.Wind swirled, and it seemed to me it was my own breath billowing through the branches.The crocus bulbs were buried in my tissue, the cedars growing from my body.The birds flew inside me.Stones sat along my bones . . . a jubilant, stunning loss of boundary, a deeper sense of oneness than I’d ever felt.

I knew that I was part of one vast, universal quilt; I knew that this quilt was itself, the Holy Thing, the manifestation of the Divine One.And I loved this universal quilt, every stitch, color, and fiber, with a heartbreaking love.It was one clear moment in time, like going to the Deep Ground that underlies all things and seeing, really seeing, what is and being pierced by the unbounded nature of it.

We attain wisdom not by creating ideals but by learning to see things clearly, as they are.

There is an ancient tradition that when Divine Revelation comes into the world, only one part is given as prophetic writings.The words are only a part of the message.The other part is placed within nature, the wisdoms inherent in the Creation.Only when we understand those hidden wisdoms will we be able to read between the prophetic lines and fully understand the message.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Knowledge gives us information.Wisdom gives us light on the way.Knowledge is skill.Wisdom is a quality.Knowledge can be learned.Wisdom can only be distilled from those places in life where knowledge is not enough to really explain what was happening to us, or information failed to resolve what was happening to the other.